Utility Week

18 | JULY 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Technology Download report The challenge of adopting new platforms Switching your customer service platform is a huge decision, particularly for large legacy energy companies, but the rewards can match the risk, finds a new report from Utility Week and Expleo. E nergy suppliers have spent the past decade transforming their businesses to meet a series of challenges that have seen both members of the original "big six" and many challenger brands exit the market. Brands which have emerged from these tribulations successfully have their fresh approach to customer service largely to thank – an area that has traditionally come in for criticism. As well as opting for better customer ser- vice, customers have voted with their feet in favour of innovative offerings and better use of technology – factors which are argu- ably easier to achieve at a start-up than an established company with eight million customers. Good customer service will only become more business-critical during the upcom- ing energy transition, which will see energy retailers switch from being mere suppliers of a product to purveyors of energy as a service. The adoption of low-carbon technolo- gies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps by UK consumers will require increased advice and interaction with their energy supplier and the creation of bespoke products and services to meet the country's net-zero agenda while also guaranteeing the best prices for consumers. This will require a certain level of agility from energy suppliers in their customer ser- vice operations. Most major players in the supply market are therefore likely to embark on re-platform- ing in the near future, or are already in the midst of the process as the IT systems the market has relied on for the past two dec- ades will not be able to handle the influx of data expected, nor allow new products and services to come to market at the necessary speed. That is the reason that Utility Week, in association with Expleo, has published a new report Platform Alteration: The Chal- lenge of Adopting New Systems for Energy Retailers. Eon UK chief executive Michael Lewis says: "We're in a new world where all the flexibility is at the customer end, and you can't have smarter customers without having a smarter way of serving them and support- ing them." But as well as gaining speed and agility, re-platforming is about stripping out unnec- essary costs and ensuring suppliers are lean and efficient with the right business changes and data strategies in place. For Eon, the takeover of Npower pre- sented a catalyst for change but the need to reduce costs is universal across the market, especially given the rise of new entrants with lower overheads. "Npower was losing £1 million a day, and had been loss-making for years. The price cap and unsustainable pricing from new entrants (many of whom have since gone bust) meant Eon as a whole was staring at an unsustainable long-term market position," says Lewis. "That meant we needed to find a way of combining our operations platforms in

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